Shipping Company “Hudson” Received Less 750 Million Rubles in Profits Due to US Sanctions

The Russian shipping company Hudson, which fell in August last year to the sanctions list of the United States Ministry of Finance for the DPRK, did not receive about 750 million rubles of revenue from contracts (in November 2018, this amount was 400 million), somehow lost due to the partners’ failure with the Hudson. This was announced on Friday by the deputy director of the company, Valery Uliskin.

Since the fall of last year, Hudson’s ships continue to have problems entering South Korean ports: ship agents refuse to engage in mooring, bunkers refuse to refuel ships for fear of secondary sanctions, as the company is on the DPRK’s Treasury list. The South Korean authorities denied any restrictions on Hudson’s ships.

“We calculated the lost revenue from August 21, when the news of the sanctions appeared, and we got 500 million rubles in 2018, and we lost another 250 this year under contracts that our partners broke or refused to sign. Plus, you can add fuel costs due to the downtime of our ships and other involuntary costs, ”Uliskin said.

He noted that the leadership of the Hudson relies on state assistance, since all the company’s ships continue to fly under the Russian flags and pay taxes in the Russian Federation. He also clarified that the latest report of the UN group of experts on the situation around North Korea said that the experts did not receive from the US any evidence of transfer of petroleum products from the company Patriot to two North Korean tankers in January 2018. Namely, this, in particular, was the reason for including the company in the sanctions list.

In 2018, the US Treasury Department announced the expansion of the DPRK sanctions lists, which included the Hudson shipping company based in the Russian Federation. The list also includes six ships under the Russian flag: “Patriot”, “Neptune”, “Bella”, “Bogatyr”, “Partizan” and “Sevastopol”. According to the American authorities, they are involved in the transfer of “petroleum products to vessels flying the flag of the DPRK, as well as in activities prohibited by the UN Security Council.”

According to the company, only one of these six vessels is an oil tanker that could provide other vessels with petroleum products. The remaining five are cargo and special vessels, one of which does not have any documents for going abroad. At the same time, the tanker was transferred to the Primorsky Maritime Logistics Company in 2017, and before that, it visited North Korea for the last time in 2016.